I'll just admit it. I really dislike praying, and my pathetic prayer life shows for it. Good Christian girls do not dislike praying, I know this. And even more so, if good Christian girls dislike prayer, they do not admit it. But alas. As this is more a blog of my experiences into faith and out of keeping up appearances, I think it best to admit my true feelings.
But in my defense, I have good reasons for not liking prayer.
1. I don't really get the point. If God knows all things and is sovereign over all things, where does prayer even factor into the mix? Can I sway the mind of God? If he is perfect, would I want to change his mind at all anyway?
2. I don't really know how it's done, or if I really even like the way it's done. When I pray, I seem to get caught up in my list of requests, but lately, I've been disillusioned with my pathetic grocery list of "wishes". It seems like we are always praying for somebody's grandma in the hospital. But then I get into an internal theological debate about what exactly I should pray for this hospitalized woman. Healing? Maybe. God's will? That lack of specificity feels like a cop-out. And so I'm back to the start. Why am I even praying about this in the first place? On that note, I don't even like talking on the phone, much less trying to focus my thoughts through a long mental conversation without getting distracted. Then people have all kinds of acronyms for how to pray-- ACTS (Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, Supplication) or others like it. The formula is hard for me. Am I spending too much time on supplication? Did I forget to mention something in confession? Maybe adoration should have been longer. And suddenly, I'm not even praying, just thinking about how I've failed in the acronym and need to start all over. Darn my perfectionism!
But then I thought about all those men who spent hours in prayer. People like Jim Cymbala or George Mueller. What were those guys doing in there all that time? And how did they stay so focused? Did they bring snacks?
I realized that perhaps there was more to prayer than I had been practicing. I certainly hoped so. This led me to pick up a book by Paul Cedar entitled A Life of Prayer. Cedar has been helping me find a better approach to prayer. In his book, he list three reasons why we pray:
1. To obey God
2. To commune with God
3. To align ourselves with God's agenda
I noticed how none of these mentioned me giving my laundry list of requests to God. There was no #4-- "To tell God everything you need him to do and how to do it." Bummer.
In fact, it states the opposite... that we pray to align ourselves with God's agenda. I am the one doing the changing and moving, not God, the eternal Rock. I could see how that would take a little more time. I'm a spiritual tortoise sometimes. She moves slowly, gets distracted easily and needs much prodding.
One of the most striking points Cedar makes in the book is that we seldom if ever come to the Lord with our actual problems. Instead, we bring our preconceived solutions and ask Him to fulfill them (55). We say, "I pray you will: heal this person, help me accomplish this task, get me out of debt, etc." And that was certainly true of my experience. Recently, I had been "praying" (if you could call my sorry one-liners authentic prayer) about an opportunity that had come available, but I was saying, "God, please allow this to happen." I was asking God to give me the specific solution I wanted without ever discussing the real issue with him. And so we had a discussion about what the problem actually was, not why I thought this was a good solution.
And that took 3 minutes... Much longer than my 5 second prior requests to God (Success!!). I'm really getting good at this praying stuff, I thought.
Compared to 5 seconds, 3 minutes is a long time. In fact, Charles Spurgeon compares our 5 second shout-out requests to a frog catching flies. The tongue shoots out, snatches a fly (the request), and goes back into the frog's mouth. Done and done. But that makes for a pretty pathetic prayer life. So my 3 minute prayer was like eating at a fast food restaurant. At least I got out of the car this time instead of going through the drive thru. It took a little longer (and I felt really good about that), but still wasn't quite nourished. Now I was getting hungry for more.
So I dug a little deeper and stumbled upon another problem with my views of prayer. Not praying was disobeying God. In response to 1 Samuel 15: 22-23, Cedar writes, "In one sense, failing to spend time in prayer with our Lord is a form of rebellion. It communicates that we do not need him very much [...] (14). Gosh, at the root of things, isn't that true? I think I've got it handled. But, by quoting Bill Hybels, Cedar also suggests that this is something that has been ingrained in us:
"Prayer is an unnatural activity. From birth we have been learning the rules of self-reliance as we strain and struggle to achieve self-sufficiency. Prayer flies in the face of those deep-seated values. It is an assault on human autonomy, an indictment of independent living. To people in the fast lane, determined to make it on their own, prayer is an embarrassing interruption."
And so, perhaps I'll begin a whole series of reasons why my ideas about prayer are so fundamentally flawed, but for tonight, it seems that it is necessary for me to mull longer on this idea of pride and one's prayer life. Could it be that one of the main reasons I don't like to pray and find it relatively unnecessary is because I've deceived myself into believing that prayer is just an interruption to my self-sufficiency? Father forgive me!
Famous Norwegian preacher, O.H. Hallesby says, "Only he who is helpless can truly pray [...] My helpless friend, your helplessness is the most powerful plea which rises up to the tender father-heart of God" (55). Perhaps, then, this will be my first step down the road of a great prayer life. I first must recognize helplessness in myself, and the eclipsing sufficiency of God.
And in light of this, perhaps this little frog is beginning to realize that flies aren't all that tasty anymore, and once we've feasted on freshness, fast food just doesn't cut it anymore.
Happy Snacking!
2 comments:
Your writing flows beautifully. You speak to subjects that we all have thought but perhaps have been afraid to say out loud. I have learned from this blog things that I wish I had understood many years ago.
I can so relate to this post! I often find myself, while praying for someone's grandmother in the hospital, thinking to myself "what is the point here?". I go through this litany of 1) Ask for Gods will be done 2) Ask for healing 3) Pray for the family to accept Gods Will 4) Ask for God to give the Doctors wisdom and on and on and on. People tell me I am great at praying for them ( I do it on FB all the time). But as I read over what I have prayed, I notice that it is as you say....a list of what I want God to do and how I want Him to do it. I hate praying too. Too often all I hear is I want, will You, I need. There are so many days of late that I just want "TO BE" but even that is an elusive lie that cannot be achieved. Thank you for your insight. I love reading your blog.
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